Lola On A Mission
by paulaharveyfletcher
Summary: This the first chapter of a raunchy thriller with strong language. Lola is a special forces soldier, sent on a mission to Africa. She falls in love not just once but twice...who will she commit to, if she ever escapes the dangers of her profession? Here is the link to the ebook: .uk/Lola-Mission-Lolas-Adventures-ebook/dp/B008ZUQD80


The setting sun shone straight into Lola Perez's eyes. She squinted through the smudges of squashed insect on her windscreen. The eye-searing brightness made the leafy Wiltshire lanes unfamiliar as the sun struck through the overhanging branches casting wild patterns of light and profound shadow that melted the dimensions of the road. She drove very slowly because she could hardly see and because a man's face filled her thoughts.

She had spoken to him for the briefest amount of time. He had pale blue eyes, regular features, an intense focus, but a shuttered look to his face, as if he was holding down anger. But something rather wonderful had happened, for the first time in a year, she saw a man she thought was drop dead gorgeous and he was clever. He had lectured for an hour on Afghanistan. His lecture had been brilliant. She said his name out loud: Colonel David Karnac. She liked his name. She wondered how old he was, probably about thirty-six. She said his name again and again, loudly, softly, slowly, and then she sung his name so that the sound filled the little car, fortunately there was no one to hear her. Colonel David Karnac, she said out loud, 'you of the cool amused eyes, I might be in love with you.'

Lola tried to think about the lecture - she had attended because she was in the Terratorial Army and knew it was only a matter of time before she would be called up and she wanted to be as well informed as possible on the political and economic situation in Afghanistan. But she actually thought about Colonel David Karnac wondering if she would ever meet him again. Her mind already looping round, replayed the moment when she first saw him, standing on the stage of the school theatre. She did not know what it was that she found so attractive about him. He wasn't exactly her type, blonde instead of dark and a little bit too cool and distant. He was long-legged with straight shoulders, not as broad as she liked. Irritated with herself for re-running her mental footage of him - she didn't want to let her mind waste itself on fruitless 'what ifs' - she made an effort and focused her thoughts on a work problem: a container of second hand clothes destined for Kenya and somehow stranded in Piraeus Port, Athens, whilst the owners fought out insurance clauses. She concentrated for about twenty seconds, then she thought about the Colonel again.

The Colonel had just returned from a nine month tour in Helmand. The lecture was fascinating, but the Colonel was mesmerizing. She sat in the ninth row back. He stood at the podium, totally focused on the talk he was giving. She stared at him, to her surprise he suddenly looked directly at her.

His pale blue eyes shot her a glance, so hot you could practically smell cordite in the air. She sat expressionless with surprise. When she recovered she tried to connect again, but he was talking, though she knew she was on the edge of his vision. At the end of the talk, he neatly finessed questions, giving just enough information to be interesting, but nothing that broke any regulations, except, perhaps when he gave the price of transporting fuel from Pakistan to Kandahar.

He was bold, answering a question many senior officers would have sidestepped. An angry young man in the audience threw a virtual hand grenade at him. 'What kind of government can the Afghans expect when we complete withdrawal, leaving an army of two hundred thousand Afghans?'

Colonel David didn't hesitate. 'The billion dollar question... Petraean strategy pre-supposes US support in Afghanistan for a long time, believe me, counter insurgency comes in one size – long, we might withdraw troops but we won't withdraw support in the services that every country needs to enable it to function creditably.' The Colonel hesitated, Lola was sitting above the angry young man, she caught the Colonel's eye and felt as if she had been shot. She couldn't tear her eyes away from his. His eyes locked onto hers, amused, and long enough for a few people to turn round in their seats to stare at her.

He broke away from her gaze and spoke, quietly, as if to her. 'Insurgents need the narco industry to finance their wars. Replacing that industry with less profitable stable products like fruits is very difficult but a vital step towards a less corrupt and stable country and something all neighbouring governments are interested in – they all battle with the problem of crime and heroine addiction.'

As he looked beyond her to answer the next question on the problems of supplying the bases with fuel, she listened with a thumping heart; apparently Quetta to Kandahar was the most expensive strip of road in the world, over twenty-six check points, mostly illegal, all charging. It cost over two thousand dollars for a fuel tanker to travel the seventy-five miles which was extraordinary she admitted, but not as extraordinary to her as her feelings for this stranger.

She knew he liked her. He might even have liked her alot, but she couldn't make a move. The man was worldly. She knew he would only make a move if it suited his game plan. Lola felt like screaming. She had an awful feeling she might have met the man of her dreams and he was years older than her, and the love of his life was his career. When the lecture ended, he was surrounded by friends. She couldn't linger without looking like an idiot; so feeling absurdly nervous she walked up to him, stuck out her hand and said 'Hello Colonel, my name is Lola Perez, and I thought your lecture was amazing.'

'Thank you Lola,' the Colonel said, smiling broadly at her. _He looked like someone you could have a lot of fun with._ Before he could say anything more he was engulfed by a crowd of well wishers who all seemed to know him very well. Lola stole a last glance at his neat features, ironically so at odds with the outburst of lust from his eyes. He half looked at her, his lips twitched in a little smile, she felt him think, 'sorry, maybe another time.'

Maybe not, Lola thought to herself, as she changed down a gear and made a valiant attempt to close her mind on him.

She crawled down the hill, over the hump-backed bridge into the Goodfords, one of five villages tucked like little knotted brick and flint bows along the south bank of the river valley. Lola was very nearly home, she slowed down even more. She was tired but not sleepy; she was buoyant with the adrenalin rush that comes from mutual attraction.

She stopped, parking up on the grass to look at the garden of her local pub. The Swan Inn was doing great business, not because of the food, which was unremarkable, but because of the lovely garden which sloped gently down to the chalk stream. The water was clear, but the level low. Since the same river ran through the garden of her home it was second nature to notice the level, usually too low in summer, and too high in winter.

Only a year ago she used to sit at one of the trestle tables in the Swan Inn, leaning into Olly, idly watching happy families throw bread to frantic ducks. They had sat in silence, a smiley smug silence, a quiet peacefulness when she knew he really loved her and she really loved him, and there was and never had been anyone in between. She had told him that they would never sit in a glum semi-hostile state like two countries forced to compromise after 'diplomatic incidents'. Olly had kissed her hair, and said it was human nature to be glum. She replied he could be glum in his own time. She wasn't interested in glumness.

As it turned out there had been a 'diplomatic incident' of such severity that she had lost a stone in weight and carried pain in her head like a hidden tumor. If there had been a degree in glumness she would have majored in it. Of all the ways to fall out of love Olly had presented her with one of the most painful.

Betrayal - a world of broken promises in a word. For months after the breakup pain had jumped on her, remembered by a line in a song, or a funny thought not shared. Sometimes a totally diss-associated memory rushed tears to her eyes, just the mere fact of a loss, any loss made her think of him. It was as if he had died, a nasty part of her wished Olly had died. The residue of the pain was anger, anger at her mother, whom she loved and hated in equal parts, her mother and Olly.

She looked at her watch. It was eight thirty. Her mother had a date, but chances were she was still getting ready. Lola thought about stopping off for a drink in the pub. But she hadn't got a book on her and without a book it was too uncomfortable to sit in the pub garden by herself. She always had a book with her, it said: 'I am lonely, but I want to be alone, I'm reading a book so fuck off.'

In the year that she had been single she had worked, god she had worked! No dates, no boyfriends, just work 8am to 9pm. She was now Operations Director of Orphans with a Future, the best job in the world, and her weekends were filled with training as a soldier in the Territorial Army.

She started up the engine again and drove away from the pub, turning down the track to her home. She dropped to two miles an hour so as to save the suspension of her Beetle Volkswagon. She loved the car; it was bright yellow, convertible and driving it was like sharing a joke with anyone with a sense of humour. She had bought it three years ago from Deborah in the office. Deborah had done a runner with a Romeo to Spain. Lola had bought the car for two thousand pounds. Since Lola had saved every penny she earned that still left her rather rich compared to her friends at university.

Because of Olly Lola deferred her university studies, then her holiday job became a real job and now two years later she was a successful woman and really really loved her job.

Lola carefully steered round a shallow crater in the drive. The estate filled in the holes in the track every May, but the earth had a life of its own and as soon as it rained holes re-appeared in new places, as if the track had a right to holes. By the following February the track resembled a giant cheese-grater.

Lola drew up in the little parking space outside the front door and turned off the engine. She sat for a while, and her mind with all the obedience of a dog off the lead, nose down, rushing after a compelling smell came up, tail wagging, with the question, would she ever see Colonel David Karnac again? As soon as she thought it, she cursed. She knew from bitter Olly-experience how easy it was to become a victim even in the most apparently normal relationship. This man was not normal. She recognised a man who was carnivorously ambitious. He hid it well under a handsome boyish look.

She dragged her mind back to the immediate – her mother. There were two other cars in the drive: her mother's blue golf and Alistair Mckean's maroon BMW. Alistair Mckean impressed her mother with his plumy voice and treacly vowels, and his rigorous perusal of a wine list. Lola took a deep breath and walked into her home.

Alistair Mckean sat back from a small wooden table, painted white to cover up stains. His bulk turned their cottage into a dolls' house. He wasn't fat, he played tennis, golf and sailed; he was solid and elegantly dressed in dark brown linen trousers, and a pale green linen shirt. He was on his second glass of a Chateau Lilian Ladouys 2007 Saint-Estephe, a grand vin de Bordeau. He had brought the wine. 'Lola,' he raised his glass in a mock toast, 'what a nice uniform...'

He made it sound as if she had put the uniform on especially for him. His voice was loud in the tiny house. His bullet shaped head made him look hard when actually he was quite nice.

'Hello Alistair,' she said evenly. She hoped to god they were going out. She wanted to wallow in the bath with Kate Atkinson's lovely detective Jackson, and saturate her mind with some classic sounds: Jeff Buckley's Halleluja sprang to mind. But first things first - her mother.

Lola and her mother had lived in Loosestrife Cottage for nineteen years. Her father had been with them for six of those years. He was a soldier, a sergeant, killed in action and the best father in the world. The small sitting room was decorated with pictures of him in uniform holding up silver cups for shooting, running, and sky diving. Lola's favourite picture was of the three of them on the beach together. She had a copy in her wallet, but she also loved the pictures of her Dad teaching her to ride a bike, playing conkers with her, and him doing funny running so that she could win their races.

After he died they couldn't bear to leave the memories. So she and her mother stayed, and the cottage was small so it suited the two of them. Consuela tried to give Lola the happiest childhood possible; she read to her, cooked cakes galore, made a tea party every Friday for all her friends, made clothes for her, did art with her, - she was the perfect mother. Lola's friends were always welcome, and would bring sleeping bags to stay the night as there were only two rooms and a bathroom downstairs and two bedrooms and a room that just fitted a bed and the water tank upstairs. The only sources of heating, were the two night storage heaters and a fireplace in the sitting room. But the teenage girls, snug in their sleeping bags, on the floor in front of the fire of the little sitting room, talked late into the night, happy in the flint and brick cottage with its tatty thatch.

The river curled round the end of the garden and the kitchen window looked out onto sheep grazing the water meadows on the far bank. The picturesque cottage flooded one winter in five; the plumbing clanked and it was damp even in summer as the high bank behind shaded it from the early morning sun. But Lola loved it and it was theirs for as long as Lola's mother cooked for the Clyde-Johnsons who lived in the big house.

Consuela, Lola's mother, had met Alistair whilst serving roast potatoes at a Bellington Estate shoot lunch.

Alistair Mckean poured Lola a glass of wine, and thought what a waste of a good looking girl – she never mentioned a boy, never brought home a boy, what was wrong with them all. Or was it her, hating all men just for one bad experience. He remembered Consuela telling him some uninteresting story about a boy called Olly. Alistair's long, very successful career in shipping, lunching and drinking had extended his girth and his knowledge of human nature, so he assumed Olly had cheated on Lola, but as he liked to see Lola smile he didn't ask any questions. Lola accepted the glass, and thanked him.

'Lola!' Consuela had ears like a cat. 'Come up here! And bring a glass with you.' Consuela sounded like a spoilt twelve year old. She spoke as if she adored you but you had slightly let her down. Lola trudged upstairs, a glass in each hand.

Consuela stood before the full length mirror in one of Lola's summer dresses. Consuela was majestic. Tall, big bosomed, big hipped, she was a luscious woman with great legs. Before she married she had been a flamenco danger. The dress was too short. 'Is it too short?' her mother asked, examining herself from every angle. Lola's mother, unlike most women, really liked her looks. She thought herself beautiful, which she was.

'Yes,' Lola said. 'Wear your own clothes.' Consuela had tried on all her clothes, they were strewn on the bed.

Her mother's narcissism annoyed her, her stance with her feet turned, naturally as she was a flamenco dancer, annoyed her, her studied elegance of movement annoyed her, the Spanish combs that stuck out of her thick dark hair casually bound ontop of her head annoyed her. Most of all Lola resented the fact that Consuela had succumbed to her own desire, even though she knew it would damage her daughter.

Consuela pulled on a black dress with a plunging neckline and added a string of pearls. 'Lola, do you think this is boring?' she asked studying her bust line, bottom line and legs as if they might be cheating on her and had somehow expanded in the intervening minute when she had not looked at herself.

'I like the dress.' Lola said grudgingly. Actually Consuela looked great in the dress.

'Are you sure? It's not exciting.' Consuela said twizzling round.

'For heaven's sake,' Lola wanted to scream, 'he's going to fuck you whatever you wear.' In the old days she would have said, 'Alistair will love it.' She said, 'It's fine.'

Lola picked up her clothes and hung them in her own wardrobe, then she sat down heavily on her bed. She didn't really begrudge her mother having a nice time with Alistair, she worked hard, so hard. But Lola marvelled at how a few overheard words could act like some chemical catalyst and change the colour of her thoughts. Lola felt her brain had morphed from a pink blobby blancmange like substance into a blue cactus spiking every thought with needles.

Olly had been very stupid. He had not built in a safety time-zone in his dalliance with her mother. One summer's afternoon just over a year ago Lola had bought a lovely rose, a deep purpled Madame Isaac Perrier for Mother's Day. She had left work early to plant it in the little border beneath her mother's bedroom window. The window had been open. As Lola placed the pot and admired a vision of future blooms she heard her boyfriend utter the words, 'God C, you've got a lovely arse.'

Amusingly it took her a good ten seconds to work out where the words came from. The words were followed by the sound of pleasurable groaning. She realized what she was listening to and ran to the other side of the house. She threw herself on the ground near the well, retched, but since she hadn't had lunch nothing came up.

She fumbled her way into her car and drove to a petrol station where she bought a packet of ten cigarettes, and a box of matches. She didn't smoke, but she really wanted a cigarette. She drove onto the A303, carefully, as if everything was quite normal. It was as if her brain was winded but she could still function, which was just as well as it prevented her from imploding then and there. She drove to the little lane that ran alongside Stonehenge, and parked opposite the great Stones.

She pushed back the seat - leaned against the door. She stared blankly at the great blocks of Stone, witness in their broken structure and unwieldy stance to centuries of survival despite miseries.

The sun was an orange ball. The Stones stood silhouetted like an ancient grey alphabet against a blue sky feathered with fierce streaks of red and orange.

Lola smoked five cigarettes, one after another. The first cigarette she was too numb to think, but she noticed it made her feel slightly sick and dizy. The second cigarette she was too numb to think, and she felt worse. By the fourth cigarette she felt very sick and she was still too numb to think. During the sixth cigarette a question popped into her head.

What do you do when the people you love most in the world betray you? Of course it was the oldest story in the book, to be betrayed by those you loved. What to do? She'd like them to both die, road-kill under a hedge in Brazil, their decomposed bodies discovered twenty years later by a horrified hitchhiker, settling down for sausage and a snooze. She let the cigarette burn down without inhaling.

She stared at the Stones.

Her brain weighed a ton, a solid ton of concrete, nothing going in and nothing coming out. A valiant attempt to process the thought of her mother and Olly fucking together had caused information overload. In an effort to avoid the knowledge her whole brain shifted sideways in her head. She actually felt it lurch in her skull. She propped the cigarette in the corner of the window and carefully held her poor head in her hands.

Lola was scared.

Her brain was malfunctioning, bouncing the information about like an infinity game, unable to process it. Please help my brain she thought, boost it, firewall it, make it calm, rational, unemotional. She was her brain, she would not let someone's actions hijack her brain. Detach, detach, step outside, she murmured into her hands. She closed her eyes, pushed back her seat, lay back, sat upright again. She reminded herself that there were 6 billion people in the world and half of them were men. That thought wasn't as comforting as it should have been.

Lola experienced a vicious pleasure in the thought that Olly might have fallen in love with her mother, but couldn't cope with the age gap. You need to be one hell of a guy to admit to falling in love with someone older than your mother! But maybe Olly had really loved her mother, wanted to marry her, and her mother said no, not brave or foolish enough to face a future where she was likely to lose him when gravity claimed the dying fragments of her youth. Lola supposed there was a slim chance he might remain in love with her, but what woman had the confidence to defy her age?

Suddenly convinced that Olly had fallen in love with her mother, Lola crumpled. Tears streamed down her face.

Lola felt as if she was vaporising into some sort of suggestion of a person, not an actual real person at all. She didn't exist in her lover's mind, or her mother's, and it was too painful to exist in her own mind.

'Detach' she thought feebly.

The cigarette wedged in the window burned to the stub.

Panic rattled through her head. She jumped out of the car, walked a few paces up the lane, turned round, retraced her steps. She walked backwards and forwards, tears running down her face for about five minutes. Not easy to detach.

Strangely a picture of her lovely father, hugging her and ruffling her hair flashed into her mind, 'You're a brave girl, now be a darling and make sure that the tricycle still works.' She had applied the brakes too keenly, flipped over the handlebars, landing on her hands and knees. Her father had kissed her knees and hugged her tight. 'It won't hurt tomorrow,' he said, 'you'll have a little scar on your knee, and every-time you look at it you'll think of me and you and the tricycle.'

The Dad she knew from the photos would say OK, you've flipped, now you need to get a grip of herself. She would, she would, but she needed to howl first, and where else could she howl her guts out without being discovered but in a deserted lane barely visible to passing traffic.

She had been so sure of Olly's love. A sentence came into her head, 'All that we are is a result of what we have thought.' Yep, she'd made herself into a train wreck. But she wasn't sure if it was her thoughts that had wrecked her, more like her emotions. Her emotions didn't feel like thoughts, they didn't parade about researching facts and figures before formulating her thought; her emotions came like tornadoes whirling through her mind and flinging everything up and away. Bits of things she loved fell broken out of the storm miles away. Her emotions destroyed her thoughts, leaving her miserable. And now she had a fucking headache brought on by cigarettes and misery.

Somewhere, between the ninth and tenth cigarette, Lola stopped walking, exhausted and, suddenly, terribly terribly bored with her painful thoughts. Her breathing slowed down. She leant against the car, her mind in neutral. She shivered noticing the cool wrap of twilight. She thought, this is interesting, I can think again. It was a very comforting thought.

She ground out the stub of her cigarette. It was a beautiful evening; cars hummed down the A303 and giant insects hummed out of the high wheat field behind her. Her eyes were sore and she had a headache but she felt human again instead of some kind of crashed computer. Her mother and Olly were history, her history. She didn't actually hate them, but she kind of did, if she could be bothered to think about them.

She did feel really grotty.

Fuck Olly, Lola thought, and was amazed that she meant it. It didn't seem natural. She wondered if there was something wrong with her. She didn't intend to see Olly again. And somehow she had to live with her mother.

Suddenly she had a depressing amount of free time. Her mind reverted to Olly, previously the holder of her spare time. How can love survive duplicity and betrayal. With a new awareness that blistered painfully Lola knew that the nature of her love was uncompromising and it didn't survive betrayal. True love between two people has a hallmark of open sweetness, a careless confidence, a fresh beauty that comes with joy; it is very similar to the state of mind of a happy person. The loved one's lying with another is a betrayal like a punch in the face for the betrayed, a brutal re-arrangement of features. She picked up a crumb of solace, at least she knew for sure she was betrayed. The silent secret betrayal would have been worse, because the strange, 'something just not quite right,' lurking deep in the sub conscious damages insidiously, like being fed poison. You think there is something wrong with you, bit by bit the joy eaten away, when in fact it is him, all the time, eating the joy away. Lola knew she was suddenly not the same person. Lola knew she might still love Olly but since she didn't trust him, was there any point in seeing him again. What would her Dad say, maybe he would say do something military – like join the Territorial Army! That almost made her laugh.

Then she thought about it. The idea of a structured full time hobby giving her no time to think pleased her. It was one way to fill in all the hours that stretched ahead without Olly. That way she wouldn't have the time or the energy to hate her mother and the memory of Olly would fade.

The double betrayal, the loss of the two people she loved most in the world was a blow that hit her physically. Immediately afterwards she functioned like a zombie, exhausted and bruised. She took a week off work because she could not get out of bed. She slept and slept. When she did eventually drag herself out of bed, her body weighed a ton, every action was challenging, as if she was moving through water.

The crushing emotional weight in her mind lessened as the weeks passed. Work helped distract her thoughts, but it was hard. She tried to get involved with all the emergency work, which tended to be logistics, getting things to people when the normal channels fouled up. She did join the TA and the instruction and physical full-on training kept her from slipping into the past. But in idle moments she noticed she saw people differently. She stood outside herself to observe people, she became quieter as she watched.

How could she have missed the electricity between Olly and her mother?

That question knawed away at her until she found an answer. She had been so excited by her own life that she was totally uninterested in theirs. She had not made the time to listen to Olly or her mother, so they had listened to each other, and synchronized. She wondered how important synchronising was to people, how important was the conversation that led to the synchronising, how important was natural attraction. So she became interested in how people communicated with each other.

She saw people from a distance, in slow time, so that she noticed their body language. She watched how they moved, how they stood, how they sat; their physical movements were partly their emotional responses to their environement. Sometimes she knew she was seeing more than a state of mind, or a mood; she was seeing an internal monologue. Shakespeare's characters vocalized their desires; for the modern man and woman language was a means of exchanging information and jokes, - listening to music was a vicarious way of expressing longing - funny or sad faces on facebook replaced gut wrenching desire. Sometimes Lola caught an internal monologue she knew the person had no idea they were actually feeling. That was terrible.

Lola's eyes acquired a will of their own. She looked at everything and everyone as if she was seeing them for the first time. She picked up so much she soon learnt to accept and reject the information. Even so sometimes her brain grew tired with the thumbprints of emotion.

For a while Lola watched men's thoughts, men she was interested in. And there were plenty of men in the Terratorial Army. After a while she tried not to do it because it made her feel like a witch.

Sometimes a man would look at her hard, as if partly aware of her reaching into him and uncomfortable with it, but most were oblivious. They did not know that she had her own drawbridge to the castles of their minds, and she wandered in, slipping through the portcullis bars, uninvited, to look around.

She was amazed at how adept men were at hiding their lust, their ability to compartmentalize, their reluctance to fall in love, the vertiginous fall when they did; she loved the juxtaposition of sweetness and selfishness that lay at the core of every decent man and many indecent ones. She didn't mean to study them, it was like walking round an art gallery and staring at pictures, so much talent to enjoy. When you live with something and it doesn't actually harm you but gives you knowledge you very quickly get used to it. So Lola was not surprised by her extraordinary empathy gift, just surprised by what she learnt. But she did find her new awareness tiring. After a few months she shut her mind down, she concentrated on her work, she did not want to know more; she pushed her gifts to the back of her mind and tried not to use them.

But today, for the first time since Olly, Lola had met a man who erupted through her mental barriers, and suddenly her mind opened up. Something about him made her switch on like a light bulb. It was wonderful and awful at the same time. She felt he was like her, he had the empathy gift. It was amazing to think there was a mind reacher out there, dreadful to think she might never see him again.

Lola dragged herself into the now. She perched on the edge of a low seated chair. She was tired and desperate for a bath. She must not let her brain scramble. A year of disciplined thought was sagging. It was astonishing. Irritated with herself for her weakness, Lola, with admirable speed, tucked Colonel David Karnac into a convenient fold in her brain and turned her attention to her mother. 'Are you going somewhere nice?' she asked; Lola tried to sound interested.

Consuela did a funny pouty thing with her mouth. 'Yes, the MileAway Shack.' Lola didn't say anything. She had done a waitressing job at the MileAway Shack. The restaurant had cubicles like an old fashioned railway carriage. If you should bump into anyone you knew the etiquette was to blank and on no account to make introductions.

Consuela sprayed her arms with a heady rose scented perfume from Paris, a gift from Alistair. Lola stood next to her in the mirror. They looked very alike, but Consuela was an exaggerated version of Lola; more curvaceous, bigger featured, bigger curls; Lola was the boyish version, less obvious, only her eyebrows were more pronounced, winging over her light golden brown eyes. Consuela smoothed down the black dress, not hundred percent happy with it but ready to go out.

Consuela descended the shallow stairs with drama, as if she was descending the grand staircase at Blenheim Palace.

Alistair liked Consuela. She was good fun, enjoyed sex, and seemed totally uninterested in his marriage. And she wasn't expensive: a couple of trips a year to pretty hotels in remote villages in Italy and some nice shoes. He was amused at how easy it was to please her. Being a woman had advantages he thought.

He wanted to be distracted. He hadn't told Lola or Consuela that he had spent the day at a polo game being entertained as a Chief Financial Officer of Scandia, the biggest shipping company in the world. Alistair specialized in chartering the Aframax class of tanker, the camel of the world's high seas, used in basins of the Black Sea, North Sea, Caribbean Sea, China Sea and Mediterranean, anywhere that non-OPEC (that meant really Canada, the States, China, Mexico, Brazil and Russia, and ex Russian states) exporting countries have harbours and canals too small to accommodate very large crude carriers. Scandia was the biggest company in the business and was suffering a crisis of 'historic proportions'; it had made its first ever loss in its 150 year history.

But Alistair was faced with the prospect of more tankers coming out of shipyards with no cargo orders in place. Business was shrinking. There were less goods to ferry round the world. For the first time in his life Alistair was facing unhappy shareholders. He had to find somewhere to park about fifty tankers, persuade the South Koreans to delay their orders, plus re-negotiate terms of payment. He had to prune overheads, cut dividends, re-evaluate a mammoth business. He didn't intend to resign, but the immediate future looked pretty bleak. Fortunately, for him, a man in his position was relatively safe from swingeing cost cutting exercises.

He swirled the wine in the glass releasing a satisfying aroma.

Lola slipped down behind Consuela, watching Alistair's appreciative reaction to her mother's entrance.

The sexiest thing about Alistair was his eyes – when he was aroused they were very hot and mischievous, totally at odds with his usual formal manners.

'You look fabulous,' Alistair said, standing up as Consuela entered the tiny kitchen.

'Thank you,' Consuela said, 'delicious wine.' She didn't sit down, she was impatient to leave. Alistair took the hint, put down his glass, took her coat from the back of a chair and held it out for her. Consuela slipped into it. Alistair had very good manners. Lola suspected that if he had known about her mother's affair with Olly, it wouldn't have worried him; he'd have put it down to a lapse of taste, rightly as it turned out. It must be nice to have such a healthy ego Lola thought, though this evening he looked less bouncy, as if he might have a worry or two.

'What are you doing tonight?' Alistair asked.

'Reading.' Lola avoided her mother's eye. She had no doubt that her lack of boyfriends gave her mother about ten minutes of 'concerned' conversation. She knew her mother would have analyzed her relationship with Olly for Alistair's benefit, no doubt coming up with some really good reasons why they had split up. Obviously Consuela would not mention the fact that she had seduced Olly. In her version of events Olly would be just too young to settle down, and Lola would be described as 'clinging', one of her mother's favourite words.

Lola had watched her mother fake helplessness for years. Consuela understood the art of "vulnerable seduction," something Lola found vomit inducing. Big eyes, fluttering eyelashes, baby girl voice, endlessly wittering on, how men didn't find it indescribably boring she couldn't think, maybe it was like musak, just nice to have in the background. Consuela shot Alistair one of her, 'Oh God! Poor Girl, She's Soo Depressed. I'll tell you about it later,' looks. Particularly infuriating when even if she had wanted to tell anyone anything, she'd rather sew up her own lips than tell her mother.

As if there was anything to tell! Consuela in the role of concerned mother - the hypocrisy made her sick. Lola picked up her book, 'Have a nice time,' she said to Alistair.

Consuela rolled her eyes and plucked her handbag from the chair leading the way out of the cottage.

Alistair gave Lola a rueful smile. She did look good in uniform.

'Enjoy your book Lola,' he said. Lola smiled, she liked him. Her mother had chosen him, married, with baggage over Olly. But the choice had taken its toll. That was how Lola knew Olly and Consuela had been a serious thing; Consuela looked older; she had left a large chunk of something behind with Olly - maybe her youth.

The moment they were out of the door she put on Jeff Buckely's yearing song Hallelujah as loud as possible. She listened, then she turned on the taps of the bath, and opened the window to let in the lovely summer evening. It was always cool in the cottage however warm it was outside. Thinking of coolness made her think of the Colonel which was odd since he made her feel so hot. I am not going to think about him she told herself sternly if I have to think it will be about myself. She shed her uniform and stepped into the bath.

She stretched out in the bath, wafting the bubbles around and contemplated her future. It was rather exciting. She had completed months of intensive training in surveillance and reconnaissance and communications. She was also a crack shot and superbly fit. She expected to be called up for Afghanistan any day now. She had trained up the uber efficient Amanda to take charge of Orphans with a Future while she was on tour. She could relax. Lola topped up with more hot water and turned the tap off with her toes. She wouldn't get too close to Alistair. Alistair, smiling, eyes narrowed and hot as he looked at her mother was a very attractive man. She decided to stay out of his way.

She felt calm enough to read, and reached out to enjoy herself with the fictional charms of Jackson, but changed her mind and let the book hang over the side of the bath as she listened to Hallelujah, again.


End file.
